Jorg's Brain Log

Only 3 weeks to go before I turn 33 and there is still so much thinking, doing and improving going on. I’m definitely improving big time in many aspects in my life. I’m especially very happy about the result of the discipline test I’ve put myself into. From now on I feel that I can be my own leader. I don’t need anybody around me to give an order, before I start to improve, explore or learn. That’s a pretty big one.

Only around 2% of the people can do this and it’s an art not to be taken lightly. If you can bring yourself to discipline to act and do then you’re a very brave and enlightened person.

Self discipline

This self-discipline has really come to affect in 2 parts of my life in the last weeks and months; personal fitness and writing! With only 3 weeks to go I’m a little heavier than last week with 113,2 kilos. Considering all the eating and drinking I’ve done in the last week, I’m very happy about that. It means that my metabolism is on fire and that I’m burning calories every minute.

My goal is to weigh 109,9 kilo’s on my 33rd birthday. So I have to drop 3,3 kilo’s in 3 weeks. It will be very hard, because I already lost 16 kilo’s and things are now much harder to lose, but I really really want to get to this point. I think I will post an extra post about how to reach my end goal tomorrow or so.

The writing part I’m also very happy with! I’m writing between 1000 and 2000 words everyday and that’s a big deal to me. It isn’t that I wanted to be a writer or that I saw any future in it for myself. But the fact is that I always wanted to create something new, and I think that with this writing I really found something for myself that I just love to do and goes naturally.

Looking forward to finish the last 3 weeks before I reach another milestone in my life.

In college I had a total of 7 years of French classes. After those 7 years I was a mediocre French student, but I could have a small conversation in French and in general I could follow movies, discussions and books in French. Unfortunately, I didn’t go to France as much after those 7 years, so the language skills I’ve developed over that time were mostly lost.

On my Dutch blog about Life Skills, I wrote an article about how to reactivate your lost language skills. And to put power to the article, I decided to reactivate my own French language skills. End of august of this year we have planned a nice 1,5 week family vacation to France, and the goals is to get my skills back so that I can do at least the basic conversations and understand what they are saying.

I’m planning to do this in the following way:

• I’m going to watch a lot of French video’s and movies, with English or Dutch subtitles in the beginning.
• Next I’m going to read some French comic books. The storyline of a comic book is always easy to follow due to the graphic, therefore you get a little help of understanding the text balloons.
• Also I’m going to reactivate my vocabulary by reading a French-dutch dictionary. Just seeing a lot of French words will reactivate a lot of the drill sessions I did all those years ago, learning the wordlists for next day exam.
• In the last month before the vacation I’m going to study a little about the language rules, to understand how to construct sentences in complete discussions.
• And last I’m going to find me some word cards; cards where only one French word is printed on together with the explanation and a sentence example.

Lets see how this will go! I’m pretty curious and excited to see how much I can bring back. I’ll update regularly about this endeavor.

As I’m noticing some energy changes in my daily behavior, I decided to give my metabolism a little swing again. For a few days I will be eating normal meals in the evening again, instead of the paleo food. Also I’m drinking some calorie free drinks, to keep me energized.

Hopefully this will spike my metabolism in such a way, that I can reach 109,9 before my 33 birthday. Still got 3,5 week to go, so hopefully I can achieve this goal.

Another energy drain that was going on, was the lack of a decent workplace. The last week my girlfriend Helle and I were pretty busy with my new office at home to finish it. I’m glad I’m now writing this from my new desk!

I already feel so much new energy when sitting here instead of in the livingroom. Really a place where I can start chaning the world.

Things are going pretty fast at the moment. The countdown to my 33rd birthday is going pretty fast! Only 28 days to go, that’s 4 weeks. I’m pretty happy to report that I’ve lost 16 kilo’s since I started a few months back with sport again, and that I’m now at 112,9 kilo’s. Well, it’s probably also thanks to the changed eating regime.

The fun things is, that it doesn’t cost any energy to make such changes. Where I would fail miserable in the past with trying to loose weight, now it has become so easy, it is amazing. It’s pretty interesting to analyze how that is possible, but in the end I think it’s just because I took it slowly but steady.

Instead of making a master-plan for the next 12 weeks, planning every meal and training, I now set out one global goal of getting back to 109,9. When I started my weight was at 128,9 kilo’s and if you think at that point about all the things you have to do of loosing 19 kilo’s, it’s such a big task.

So the first thing I would do is set myself a task to go back to 120 kilo’s, in 4 weeks time. Sub-goal number 1! And instead of changing everything at once, I first started with implementing some exercise in my schedule again. Every week that went by I added another exercise to the list, or another eating habit.

If you reach one sub-goal, plan the next one! And plan week by week, day by day. Most importantly, if you mess up one day, just keep going! Everything is NOT ruined because you did one thing wrong, just learn from it and don’t do it again.

I’ve set a goal to reach 109,9 kilo’s this weekend. That means I’ve got to loose 3 kilo’s in a week. To be honest, I’m not going to make it. And if I did it would be an unhealthy way of reaching this. So did my mission fail? No! I just keep going in the next week, until I finally reach that goal.

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” Thomas Edison

Wow, time flies when you’re having fun! There is a lot going on at the moment. Some how my days are filled, but it feels good to be busy again like this. So, only 35 days left before I turn 33! That’s pretty exciting news, especially with all these developments in the last few weeks.

As I’m also sprinting for 4 weeks to certain goals, I probably need to adjust something. While I’m loosing weight pretty well, I’m afraid that if I keep doing the same thing as the last two weeks, I won’t make it. In the first week I’ve lost 4 kilo’s, but in the second week only 1. So I’m going to change one little aspect: I remove the late evening meal that I had on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I already removed it from the other days, where my diner consisted of eating the same as the family, but now I’m also removing that late snack on the really strict days.

Water drinking is really no problem anymore. I really can do without anything else from now on. I drank some soda on Sunday, which is my junk day, but I even switched back some glasses to water.

Sports is going really well! I’m starting to notice that the weight-loss is somehow affecting my performances in a positive way. Freediving is going great as you can read on Sharkbait. Fitness is also going good. I think I keep it as simple as I’m doing it right now: 3 times a week 1 exercise. Running also not a problem anymore now that I make 3 variations per week.

One thing to improve: I’ve got to keep a stricter writing schedule! It was pretty hard in the last week, with the launch of my company, still writing as much as I wanted to, but that is not an excuse. It only takes 2-3 hours per day to-do, so I’ve got to keep focused.

All in all, if I look at the small number of calories I’m taking, all the physical and mental activities that I’m doing, I’m pretty happy with how my energy level is keeping up with it. Go go go!

If you try something new, it’s sometimes hard to keep up with. The skills aren’t there yet, you have to get used to it, it hasn’t been done a lot, so your brain hasn’t made a new habit out of it. Well, I’m glad that I’m starting to notice that my new way of eating is becoming a habit and that it’s becoming easier and easier to follow.

I’m pretty happy to report that I dropped again some weight in the last week and that I’m only 4 kilos left from my goal of reaching 109,9 kilo’s. So now I’m at 113,9 kilo’s and I’ve got two weeks of sprinting left. That’s 2 kilo’s for each week, or 0,3 kilo’s per day. That should be doable!

The water drinking part takes no real effort anymore. It’s strange to see how easy it’s to forget my soda habit. The only thing I’m drinking is water, water and some more water. And it feels good and clean! Like I’m washing myself from the inside. The food part is also getting easier. In general I keep to the same ingredients all week. For protein I use eggs, fish and chicken. And for vegetables I take pies&carrots, spinache, cucumber, salad. I mix the two up and use some dressing and spices and make some delicious meals from this. The fact that I’m using the outside grill a lot probably adds up to the flavor.

I’m now back to a regular sport schedule as well. One that is easy to maintain. 3 times a week fitness and 3 times a week running. This together with two freediving sessions each week is enough for physical activity of now. Before expanding lets create the above as a habit. Two more weeks to go and then I’ll see where I take it from there.